Re-Orientate

I struggle the most with envy.  With the click of a button, I can be swept up and taken from being fully present in my life, to completely absent from it.  With a click, I can be in someone else’s living room seeing their creative interior design.  I can be on their vacation with them, watching their parenting successes, and their daily discipline of exercise.  With a click, I am transported to someone else’s life, and left with a hunger and desire to pursue a life that mimics theirs.

Envy is like a shadow that follows me or a piece of moist gum stuck in my pocket.  It is like a fishing net that I get caught in and can’t get untangled from.  It carries with it distinct emotions: insufficiency, loneliness, frustration, and dissatisfaction. 

There is no faster pathway to discontentment than social media and the wake left behind it. 

When I think of transforming my mind, when I think of soul renovation, like a child pulling on my shirt is this nagging struggle with envy.  Nothing is more distracting to a conversation than a child pulling on your shirt, and nothing is more interruptive to my soul than the nagging tug of envy.

I think of all I have lost because of envy: contentment, joy, hope, gratitude, and comfort.  I think of all the pathways I’ve run after, because of envy.  

We are made for deep satisfaction in God. We are meant to give over fully to the life He has given us. 

How do you become awake to the present reality of His presence, and His strength, and His goodness, for YOU in THIS moment, and for eternity? 

For me it starts with recognizing those pangs of jealousy and casting out those lies that point me to others’ lives as the answer to my own.  All I long for, can be found in the person of Christ.  And He has given me all I need for this day.

He is the one I need to please.  It’s His voice of approval I want to hear.  It’s His path I want to follow.  It’s this life, the one I am in, that I want to be alive to. 

Lord, Help me reorient my life around You and Your glory and not the endless, meaningless, ever-moving line of what is required in order to be considered worthy.

What nagging issue is distracting you from the pursuit of God and satisfaction in His love?

The pursuit of God and His pursuit of you, is the love story your soul was made to sing.